please empty your brain below

A Pedant Writes.

Strictly speaking, the Circle, District and H&C lines are not 'tube' lines but sub-surface.

I know, I should get out more...

The Other Tony in Walsall

I disagree. If you're catching a train from Paddington from whatever platform, you have your ticket and you don't need to go shopping first, then the C&H&C lines are better.

Particularly so if you're going for the HEx to T3 or T5 when you want to be at the front end of the train anyhow.

I disagree too - unless you're travelling first class on the long distance trains, you're going to to have to walk half the length of the train anyway

Of course, you've set out perfectly how the platform allocation should work. In reality the service has been know to get disrupted on rare occasions (ok, several times a day) and in that case the platform arrangements at Edgware Road are liable to go out the window while controllers try to get the service back on schedule. So you could end up on a terminating Circle, for example, and still face a trek over the footbridge. Not sure if passengers will be warned about which platform a train will terminate at from Paddington but it will be important for some passengers.

Of course, what they should really do is abandon the Hammersmith & City line, and extend all Circle lines trains EAST, over along the top of the circle and terminate at Barking.

So trains go from Hammersmith to Barking, around the loop (and vice versa).

that'd be fun to see.

Got to agree with Henry and Ian. Any advice that involves sending people with luggage over the footbridge at Paddington Praed Street is barmy.

For all its faults, Paddington H&C is probably the best located tube station at any London terminus, assuming all you want to do is catch a train.

...so, for the past several decades, the Circle line has been dumping anti-clockwise passengers at a inconvenient Paddington station with a nightmare footbridge. Thank goodness they changed the route.

I see I may need to rewrite number 3.

What? Did you not go on one last all-around-the-circle journey for us to enjoy vicariously?

I'd like to join the consensus of dissenters on point 3 - while Praed St isn't *that* bad, it's certainly far easier to get from the LU platforms to the GW low-numbered platforms via H&C than via Circle. Unless you want to use Paddington's wonderful retail facilities of course... you're not being sponsored by Network Rail here are you DG?

OK OK, I changed number 3.

For non-TfL types, I should point out that Praed Street is the former name for Paddington (Circle) station (when there was only one Paddington (Circle) station, not two).

Clearly the thing to do is to lug all one's luggage out of the westbound H&C/Circle train at Baker Street; then (if the limited-hours Chiltern Street exit isn't open), drag it up a crowded staircase, over a crowded and narrow bridge then through the ticket hall, up some more stairs, then, over the road (either via pedestrian crossing, or subway - as you so choose - oh no actually that subway's been closed for now hasn't it), then get the 205 bus to Paddington station instead.

Hmmm. Regretably the age of this, mostly original, bit of the underground network seems to be showing.

Well, in your section 3 you refer to the Bakerloo Line option as being an awful lot of stairs and escalators etc. I think you are assuming that one's starting point would be the Circle & H&C platforms, because (unless you were on the Eastbound Circle/H&C platform) it would indeed be up steps and down and down and down etc. However, if you arrive at Baker Street on the Metropolitan Line (either Eastbound or Westbound) then it's actually very straightforward, even if you have medium luggage. From the Met Line platforms you only have to go down one small set of steps and down one set of medium escalators. Same in return upwards if you are going to get Met Line again. Click here and here for some action video taken on my mobile phone of just how easy it is to get down to the Paddington-bound Bakerloo Line from the Met Line platforms at Baker Street.

There will be an awful lot of confused people travelling on the Circle line next week. This may work in the long term, but I feel for anyone who comes into London at, let's say, King's Cross St. Pancras to get into work at High Street Kensington.

They will of course eventually learn that they will now have to change trains at Edgware Road, but I would imagine that these passengers will be a little bit inconvenienced and annoyed at first, especially as the King's Cross St. Pancras-High Street Kensington journey could be done quickly on one train before this change.

Will you give it a rest! I like your blog but sometimes when the horse is dead you should stop flogging it!

If I might refer you to the LUL terms of carriage which state:

"12.1.3. You must not bring with you anything that:
• you are unable to carry yourself (including up/down fixed stairways)"

I believe they are under no obligation to consider people with bags. But then how many passengers read the Conditions of Carriage, eh?

I hate the nuCircle.

:0(











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